10. Madeleine
MADELEINE
Ifound Rhett in the lodge, alone at a table by the window with a laptop open in front of him. I did not say hello.
“Outside.”
He looked up. Whatever was on my face, he read it in about half a second, because he closed the laptop without a word and followed me out onto the porch and shut the door behind us.
I shivered. I’d forgotten my jacket. I was too angry to care.
“It was supposed to stay between us,” I said. “You promised me.”
“Madeleine—”
“You swore to me.” My voice came out low and shaking, almost unrecognizable. “I don’t ask people for things. You know that about me.”
“I know what I did.”
“Then why.”
He didn’t answer right away, which was worse than if he’d tried to. He put his hands on the porch rail and looked out at the snow.
“You told Blake Bennett,” I said. “You told a filmmaker. With a camera. For a movie that four million people are going to stream on a Tuesday. Judging me from their couch.” My hands were shaking, so I made fists of them.
“Do you understand what you’ve done? It’s not a secret now. It’s footage. And I can’t control it.”
“You can’t control it,” Rhett repeated quietly. “That’s the real rub, isn’t it?”
“Don’t you dare make this about me.”
“That’s what’s got you. Not that they know. That you can’t control the narrative, as you’re so fond of saying.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Rhett Lawson. I am not in the mood.”
He turned around and looked at me. His eyes were bloodshot, and I realized with a lurch that he looked terrible. Rhett never looked terrible.
“I don’t really care what kind of mood you’re in,” Rhett said. “It was time to tell people what happened. It’s time the guys know how much they owe you.”
“You know I hate that word—owe. I don’t want anyone owing me anything.”
“Think about what you put up with from Knox. Ten years of his nonsense. Calling you a machine, a shark, a woman with a marketing plan where her heart ought to be. And you’d just ignore him and keep doing the work that changed all our lives.
” He shook his head. “Ten years, and not a word about what you did for us.”
“Because I didn’t want him to be nice to me just because of that.” I could barely get it out. “That was our deal. No one but us knew the truth.”
“Yeah, well, I’m over it. I’ve watched a man I love talk about a woman I love like she was garbage, and kept my mouth shut, because a promise is a promise.
” His voice cracked. “And I could not stomach it for another minute. Blake asked me a question about the tour and it all just came out. If you want to hate me for it—go ahead and hate me. But I would rather you hate me than let one more person in this world think you’re the villain of a story you’re actually the hero of. ”
The wind came across the porch. My eyes stung. Stupid weather.
“You had no right,” I said.
“I know, but I don’t care.”
“It was my story to tell.”
“I know it was.”
“It was not yours, Rhett. Not yours at all.”
“I know,” he said. “I’d do it again.”
I stared at him. “You—”
“I’d do it again.” He said it flat, no apology in it at all. “You want me to grovel, I’ll grovel. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life that I broke my word to you. But I will not be sorry that it’s out.” He pushed off the rail. “Because you don’t get to do what you usually do.”
“Which is what exactly?”
“Erase yourself. Pretend Mindy never existed. Stay in the background so no one truly sees you.”
“Do not call me Mindy. She has nothing to do with this.”
“She’s still in there, you know. She’s the reason you don’t want anyone to look at you too long.
You’re afraid they’ll see who you were before the grand reinvention.
But let me tell you something. Mindy is the woman who bet her entire career on Jack and his boys.
This person you present to the world—Madeleine Price—she would never take such a risk.
She would take what was good for herself and move on to the next client.
Mindy though? She’s the girl who managed to feed her little sister even when there was nothing in the fridge.
She sat on the floor of her mom’s dumpy living room and played records for Charlie to keep you both warm.
Mindy’s the woman who loves music more than anything in the world.
Mindy’s the one who fought for us. You don’t want any part of Mindy, but I sure as hell do. ”
“You’re wrong.”
“No, I’m right. That’s exactly what you’ve done.
” He was up now, moving with that restless Rhett energy.
“You know what the story is? The real story? Not the songs, not the awards, not the arenas. The story is that a bunch of nobodies from nowhere made something that shouldn’t have been possible.
And every single one of us had one moment where we could have played it safe, and not one of us did.
” He turned to me. “Beck Reed walked away from his family and their money to choose country music over the symphony. Grant Walker made an enemy out of his own father when he chose drums over the military. And me? I could’ve done anything with my life.
Become an executive for some boring tech firm and lived in the suburbs with a wife and kids.
Instead, I sent my best friend’s demo tape into a singing competition.
I was twenty years old, working a bar job to get through college, and I spent money I didn’t have on postage so that the world could hear what I already knew. Jack Wilder was a star.
“Rhett, stop.”
He didn’t stop. “Wyatt Black could have taken any opener in the country and made his life easy. He took a chance on a sound that scared the label, because he saw himself in Jack and the guys. He could’ve played it safe and he didn’t.
” He pointed at me. “And you. Twenty-six years old, holding the biggest comeback in country music in the palm of your hand—the account that would’ve made you untouchable for the rest of your natural life—and you spent it on five guys you believed in when no one else did.
You could have played it safe and you didn’t. ”
I swallowed the lump in my throat.
“That’s the story, Mindy. That’s the whole story.
Not one of us was cutthroat. Not one of us was jealous.
Not one of us was safe. We were kind to each other at exactly the right moments, and a miracle came out of it, and—” His voice cracked.
He had to stop and start over. “You don’t get to cut yourself out of the miracle because it embarrasses you to be seen doing something good.
I don’t know if you associate goodness with weakness, or what it is that makes you so stubbornly stubborn, but I’m done pretending. ”
“You should have asked me,” I said.
His shoulders slumped. “Yes. I should have. In my defense, it just kind of slipped out of my mouth and, once I started, I couldn’t stop. Regardless, I’m sorry.”
The anger left me all at once. But I couldn’t stay. I had to go. Had to get out of there and think. I turned to go.
“Madeleine.”
I stopped, but I didn’t turn around.
“This thing with you and Knox—you’ve both had it all wrong. He’s been in love with you this whole time.”
“What are you talking about?” I still didn’t turn around.
“I know him. He’s like you. He has a certain persona he shows the world, but that’s not who he is.
He’s really just a hardscrabble kid who wants someone to love him exactly as he is.
You don’t know his family, but I do. It was just as cold growing up as it was for you, only it had nothing to do with whether they’d turned the heat off.
He was this sensitive kid, you know, who no one really understood except for his Gramps.
And today, I realized, he’s been in love with you since the beginning. That’s why he’s been so rough on you.”
I’d liked to have said I didn’t understand, but, the truth was, I did. I knew exactly how frightening soft, forgiving feelings were and how much easier it was to assume the worst, to invite anger before compassion. Anything to avoid the cold.
Only our thinking might in fact be flawed. But how did one change our view of the world and our place in it? I had no idea.
I turned back to look at him. “You really think he loves me?”
“I really do.”
I left him then, stumbling back inside to the lodge and toward the room where Blake Bennett was currently set up for interviews, ready to beg her to take it all out of the film. I could not let the world see me or know anything about me. I was a private person, and it had to stay that way.
But why? Mindy Sue’s voice played in my head. Why do you care if people know you?
Because they’ll see right through me. Right through me to you. They’ll know I’m a total fraud.
Blake Bennett’s editing setup was in one of the meeting rooms off the lobby—two monitors, a mess of hard drives, a pair of headphones on the table. She looked up when I came in, seeming surprised to see me.
“Madeleine, you’re not on the schedule today, but I’m happy to move you up.”
I didn’t bother with formalities. “I need you to cut it.”
She didn’t ask what. She just gestured to the chair across from her. I remained standing.
“Rhett’s interview,” I said. “The part about the tour. About Wyatt. I need it out of your film, and I need your assurance it doesn’t exist in any cut, any assembly, any bonus feature, any extra. It’s gone.”
“Okay,” Blake said.
I blinked. “Okay?”
“It’s your life. If you tell me you don’t consent to it being in there, then it won’t be. I told everyone at that first dinner that, if you say stop, I stop, no questions.” She turned in her chair to face me fully. “I meant it. I don’t play games. You’ve known me long enough to know that.”
I’d come in here expecting a fight, prepared with leverage, threats, contracts, and the fact that I had personally negotiated her financing.
None of it was needed. She’d disarmed me in nine seconds by simply agreeing.
I stood there in the middle of the room with nowhere to put any of my tumultuous feelings.
“Then cut it,” I said. “Please.”